I’ll be honest, life has kind of been stressing me out lately. A lot. Between classes throwing exams, papers and more at me while the semester winds down, four days of work at the Daily Titan constantly trying to keep sinking ships afloat (Since, as I like to say, news is and always will be a fickle mistress) and certain extra family obligations, it’s been hard not to feel the weight of the world on my shoulders.

Sure, I have my typical daily distractions like Fire Emblem Heroes and Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Links, but really I think I’ve started to miss writing about more creative subjects of passion outside of campus news. Here on this blog, at the very least.

I figured maybe I could talk about my mobile gaming obsessions to try and relieve some of the stress, but honestly there are a few barriers to that for me right now.

As far as Duel Links is concerned, I’m just not really sure what I would talk about. There’s no major events happening and I’m still working on building up my card collection enough to be able to build some better decks, so not much of a subject to jump off of… Even if it continues to suck up almost every bit of free time I don’t have.

However, there isn’t much I want to talk about in the realms of Fire Emblem either. I’ve been so busy with work that I’ve just about missed most of the current Pegasus vs. Wyvern riders Voting Gauntlet, and although supporting Team Minerva has proved fruitful up until now…

Yeah. Not really too much to say when you see that kind of awe-inspiring disparity before you.

Oh, and I pretty much missed the boat entirely on hyping up Fire Emblem Echoes for myself considering it comes out in 10 days. Sure, I’m still going to buy and play the ever-loving life out of that game because it’s Fire Emblem, I just didn’t really delve into some of the complexities of reveal trailers and such because of my aforementioned lack of time.

I was beginning to think hope was lost, and that I’d just have to continue trudging through the daily grind of being a workaholic student journalist… But an old flame emerged, and quite literally breathed fresh life into my lungs.

Okay yes, that whole little introduction segment probably seems a little over-the-top and melodramatic, complaining about first world problems like not having enough interesting things in my video games to talk about…

And it was.

But hey, I wrote most of that at like 2:30 in the morning or something, because like I said I basically don’t have any time during the day and also apparently enjoy making life harder for myself.

Anyway, for as over-the-top as it was, the sentiment I tried to put across still stands. I really feel like this blog became my own little passion project during the build-up to Pokémon Sun and Moon, when every little leak got me excited to talk about my feelings and opinions into an essentially endless void meant to entertain myself more than anyone else.

So when I saw a pretty substantial new Pokémon-related piece of news come out, I just had to jump on it. It really did bring back that internal flame of excited passion to write, even if the subject matter may not be all that extensive in it’s own right.

On April 7 (yes a few days ago, but I’ll spare you all the 56th mention of my tight-packed schedule) two videos came out. The first of which revealed a new Mythical Pokémon preparing to grace 3DS’s all around the world:

It’s only 16 seconds long, but man did it feel reinvigorating to hear that battle theme play over a reveal trailer again… Even if that trailer is, in this case, more of a teaser announcing that more details will be “coming soon.”

Now, Marshadow is by no means a new reveal to anyone enveloped in the Pokémon Community. Literally every detail about this cute little Ghost/Fighting-type could be found on Serebii.net and probably just about every other Pokémon website right around when Sun and Moon first dropped last November – if not even before then.

Personally, I love his design and I love his typing. Marshadow will be our first Ghost/Fighting-type, and with access to the ability Technician, all the elemental punches and more, he’ll definitely be fun to mess around with. Even if I’m still not a fan of using Legendary and Mythical Pokémon just in general.

However what really helps Marshadow now stand out is the second video that was put out on April 7. A pretty substantial trailer for the next Pokémon movie: Pokémon, I Choose You.

When the first trailer for this new movie came out some time ago, I didn’t really pay it much mind. The Pokémon anime hasn’t been a part of the package deal that keeps my interest in some time, and the movies kind of get lumped into that same category for me.

Seeing this new trailer changed that, however. As it turns out, there are going to be far more liberties taken with the original anime story from the looks of it.

Most notably, which should be obvious by the way I’ve set this whole thing up, Marshadow appears in Ash’s shadow and acts as a guide for the new trainer and his friends. At least, according to the movie summary translation on Serebii. Yeah, I’m still leaning heavily on that site for my information – some things never really change.

The movie is also going to take a much more intense turn toward Ash’s relationship with the Johto legendary Pokémon Ho-Oh, who was famously first unveiled in the initial episode of the anime, essentially confirming that more Pokémon games would be coming out at the time.

A heavy focus on these two Pokémon isn’t the only thing that has been changed for the 20th Pokémon movie, however. Trainers and Pokémon from Alola appear to challenge Ash. It’s a nice touch considering there’s so much synergy between Alola and Kanto in Sun and Moon, as trainers are literally seen traveling between the two regions pretty frequently, though with this other point some things are brought into question.

At the same time as there is more of a focus on Alola, Ash’s travel partners are not the expected Brock and Misty we’ve all grown to know and love from the early years of the show. Some things are still the same, as many of the shots in the trailer parallel plot points in the original anime, but there’s still quite a bit that seems to be different.

Does this suggest that the movie is set in an alternate universe from the original show? Or is this retelling perhaps more of an attempt to reboot and modernize the original for a current Pokémon loving audience?

I’d be willing to wager the prior over the latter, but who knows at this point.

While we’ve yet to get the details on exactly how Marshadow will be released, whether the ability to download him will be linked to the movie in some form or another, it seems like there probably will be a tie-in with the movie in Japan before the rest of the world gains access to the Ghost/Fighting-type considering that’s the pattern we’ve seen many times with Mythical and Legendary Pokémon in the past.

Even if there’s a wait, I’m still excited. Pokémon has grown a little under my radar lately, and being able to talk about it and imagine possibilities involving lore again really has my motor running.

What do you think about Marshadow? Or the idea of the newest Pokémon movie changing up the well-known original plot of the original season of the anime? Are you excited about it? I know I am, so let me know what you think in the comments below.

On the one hand, I went to the first annual University Honors Program banquet, and had a blast spending time with professors, faculty and other students who I’ve been in multiple classes with at this point. Always a fun time, and I’m glad I went. I didn’t wind up getting a lot of photos, and it wasn’t necessarily an outwardly exciting enough event to warrant talking about it extensively here, but I figure having it mentioned at least should be good.

However, the main reason I was busy happens to be the focus of this post here today. While I was in my history class, the Cal State Fullerton College Republicans club President Chris Boyle called me up and let me know that they were going to be talking at an Associated Students Inc. (ASI) Committee meeting about their resolution to get suspended lecturer Eric Canin terminated from campus after a University investigation came back saying he struck a student on February 8.

The Daily Titan, and specifically the news desk, has been following the Canin incident pretty closely for more than two months now, it’s pretty much been our big story and it really does feel like my baby at this point to be completely honest. So, when the chance presented itself thanks to my connections with the republican groups on campus, I had to jump at it, even though it meant missing my Investigative Reporting class that day.

Really, this pretty much is like a long-form investigative piece anyway from how I see it, so I suppose I can’t really complain about that.

While the coverage started off a little rocky, as there was some confusion regarding the meeting the Republicans club thought they wanted to attend not actually existing anymore and having to figure out when the meeting they needed was, in the end it all worked out and the club was able to address the ASI Board of Directors Governance Committee regarding the resolution they need a Board member to author so it can be reviewed and potentially passed.

The story itself goes into more detail about what they talked about, namely the feeling among club members that CSUF President Mildred Garcia and the school’s administration have not done enough in regards to the Canin incident, that they don’t feel their safety and freedom of speech have been protected adequately and their desire to have ASI stand with the students if the California Faculty Association (the teacher’s union) is standing with the professor.

However, it also delves a little more into why a resolution is significant and what it takes to pass one, as I had a nice talk with the Board of Directors Chair after the meeting ended. On top of that, there are comments from the CFA and from the University in regards to things that have been said… So it’s a pretty meaty story, and one I’m pretty happy about now that it’s done and printed.

Granted, it was a lot of work to pull it all together because of how much more information I had to incorporate than I expected… But that’s what having great friends and fellow editors is for: helping me turn my rough work into far better pieces than they ever would have been without the help.

The work we’ve been doing following this story has honestly been one of the highlights of my semester. It’s one of the first times I’ve really felt that feeling of being a journalist covering something truly important, covering it from all angles and making connections along the way that have only helped broaden my horizons.

It’s been great, and it’s nowhere near done yet. Everything is still going through the motions and there’s more going on even later this week in regards to the case. I continue to look forward to it, and I continue to look forward to working with a great team that’s only helped facilitate covering such a big issue to the best of our collective abilities.

However, this particular piece is all mine, and if you want to see the article in its entirety, you can check it out here. You can also see my full archive of work for the Daily Titan over on the right!

Alright, gather around ladies and gents, it’s time for another edition of everyone’s favorite story, ‘Jason writes a story that’s far too long out of nowhere to save the news page from falling apart.’

Are you saying that’s not your favorite story? Well then, luckily for you obviously small sub-section of dissenters out there I don’t have a hell of a lot of time to write this out. It’s more of a quick update if anything, since I have a banquet for the University Honors Program to attend tonight. There might even be a bonus post on that later, we’ll have to see.

To make a long story short, production yesterday was a bit of a mess. All of our stories were on deadline, so it was stressful just waiting for things to come in. One of the stories was one I was working on about the Lobby Day event being put on by the California Faculty Association, in which a bunch of teachers and students from all 23 CSU campuses went to Sacramento to spend the day with our legislators in the Assembly and the Senate talking about whatever they felt was important.

Obviously a lot of the talking points revolved around the recent tuition increase, since a stipulation holds that if the CSU system gets fully funded by the legislature soon there won’t be a need to have it at all. And equally obviously, I’d hope, was the fact that we weren’t going to be able to actually send someone to Sacramento to cover the story since it’s on the other end of the state, so all our coverage had to be through the voices of people who were there.

It took just about all day, but I managed to get a hold of the communications director for the CFA who helped me end my game of phone-tag with the CFA’s Fullerton representative Michele Barr.

Though we’d been trying to get in touch with somebody for a couple of days, it wasn’t until the last minute that we pulled these sources together. Between that and some documentation from CFA press releases and Assembly Bills, what was planned to be a small 200 word evolved into an out-of-nowhere 800 word piece that filled in space for a lot of the smaller content we were trying to fit on two pages.

Honestly, I’m pretty proud I was able to get it out there, because I feel like it’s a really solid story for the time constraints I had to write it on. Plus, we didn’t even have to stay all that late for deadline night last night, which felt like a really sweet bonus.

Next week we’ll have to see if it’s a different story, since there’s a lot of big enterprise-level pieces we’re going to be publishing on multiple days. There will also be a couple of Canin updates (including one that yours truly has been working on most of the day), so it should be a really exciting week to pick up the Daily Titan.

If you want to see the article in its entirety, you can check it out here. If you want to see my full archive of work for the Daily Titan, you can look over at the list on the right!

To be honest, I wouldn’t necessarily consider this to be a full article published in the same vein as the other stuff I’ve posted up here on my blog. If anything it’s more of a small update I pulled together, but it is on the front page of the Daily Titan today and it does have my byline on it so… I figure why not mention it.

Over Spring Break, our student government (Associated Students Inc., or ASI) announced who are going to be the headlining performers for the annual Spring Concert that’s happening this upcoming weekend. Rapper and producer Lupe Fiasco and electronic musician ZHU will be performing for Cal State Fullerton students, alumni and other guests on April 8 alongside two student groups that won competitions throughout the semester.

The announcement was significant in part because Spring Concert is a pretty well beloved event by the student body, and this is the eleventh annual one being held. It was also significant because there was talk of the announcement happening before spring break that had to be postponed due to issues regarding the artist’s contracts. We wrote an article on that too, so check it out if you’re interested.

That’s really all there was to what I wrote besides filling in ticket prices and such, so to be honest I’ll probably have more words written up for this post about the story than I wrote for the story itself. Funny how that works sometimes.

If you want to check out the article in its entirety (not that reading it will take you that long), you can see it here. You can also check out my full archive of work for the Daily Titan over on the right!